Renting your own transport is the best way to explore Bali, in my opinion. This morning my friends from Oregon wanted to join our friend Palu, who was surfing at Green Ball, on the southern tip of the Bukit Peninsula. He said to meet him at his house at 8.30am. prblem was most of the car rental places on Jl. Dhyana Pura open around 9am.

Driving down to Jl. Padma Utara on my motorbike, I saw a car outside C.V. Amertha Dana, a place I’ve used before. They had a Suzuki Katana right there so I took it, price 70,000rp a day. The process took about 10 minutes, including filling in the form, handing over 70,000rp cash and checking out the car. Driving over to the Puri Cendana hotel on Jl. Dhyana Pura, I parked and checked in with the crew. They had eaten and got moving. Ollie, a surfer from Oregon, strapped his board to the roof of the Suzuki, just as well, as Americans are big people, and there wasn’t any spare room in the car with the 4 of us and Toby’s daughter Maya. A pitstop at a petrol rack on Jl. Seminyak, got us moving and we were at the Bukit peninsula soon. Amazingly, the tiny Suzuki was able to haul us all up the hill to the Bukit. It was cramped, but did have a kixking AC system, which we were glad for.

If you are planning to rent a car for a trip, best thing is to arrange it the day before. On occassion they have allowed me to take the car on a tuesday night, to use all day wednesday, returning thursday morning, for just 1 day’s rental cost.